金融时报 | 销售额不及华尔街预期，Alphabet股价下滑

Alphabet shares sink after cloud growth stalls and spending surges


Google parent vows to spend $75bn this year on data centres to meet rampant demand from artificial intelligence.
这家搜索巨头在人工智能竞争中也加大了对数据中心的投入。



Alphabet’s revenues undershot estimates in the fourth quarter as the search giant’s cloud business grew slower than expected, while it continued to accelerate its spending on data centres in response to demand from artificial intelligence.
Alphabet第四季度营收低于预期，原因是这家搜索巨头的云业务增长速度低于预期，同时，为了应对人工智能的需求，该公司继续加快在数据中心的支出。
   
Revenue rose 12 per cent to $96.5bn in the three months through December compared with the same period the previous year. Excluding traffic acquisition costs, that figure was $81.6bn, missing Wall Street estimates in a Bloomberg poll of $82.8bn. Net income rose 28 per cent to $26.5bn.
截至去年12月的三个月里，营收同比增长12%，达到965亿美元。除去流量获取成本，这一数字为816亿美元，低于华尔街在彭博社调查中预计的828亿美元。净利润增长28%，达到265亿美元。
   
Alphabet shares dropped more than 6 per cent in after-hours trading. The stock had previously risen 45 per cent in the past 12 months, giving it a market capitalisation of $2.5tn and making it the fifth most-valuable listed company in the world behind Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon.
Alphabet股价在盘后交易中下跌逾6%。该股此前在过去12个月内上涨45%，市值达到2.5万亿美元，成为仅次于苹果(Apple)、微软(Microsoft)、英伟达(Nvidia)和亚马逊(Amazon)的全球第五大市值上市公司。
   
While Google Cloud services business posted a 30 per cent increase to almost $12bn, this was slower than the 35 per cent growth rate in the third quarter, and below the $12.2bn analysts had forecast.
虽然谷歌云服务业务增长了30%，达到近120亿美元，但这低于第三季度35%的增长率，也低于分析师预测的122亿美元。
   
Alphabet’s spending on AI infrastructure continued to escalate in step with its Silicon Valley rivals. Fourth-quarter capital expenditure jumped to $14.3bn, up from $11bn last year and exceeding expectations for $13.2bn.
Alphabet在人工智能基础设施方面的支出继续与硅谷竞争对手同步增长。第四季度资本支出从去年的110亿美元跃升至143亿美元，超过预期的132亿美元。
   
Chief executive Sundar Pichai said: “We are confident about the opportunities ahead, and to accelerate our progress, we expect to invest approximately $75bn in capital expenditures in 2025.”
首席执行官桑达尔•皮查伊(Sundar Pichai)表示：“我们对未来的机遇充满信心，为了加快进展，我们预计将在2025年投入约750亿美元用于资本支出。”
Last week, Microsoft revealed it spent $22.6bn in the comparable three-month period, but its shares fell sharply after sales in its Azure cloud computing unit also disappointed. Meta’s quarterly capex was $14.6bn, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledging to spend “hundreds of billions” more to stay in the vanguard of AI research and products.
上周，微软披露这三个月的支出为226亿美元，但由于其Azure云计算部门的销售额也令人失望，微软股价大幅下跌。Meta的季度资本支出为146亿美元，首席执行官马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)承诺将再投入“数千亿”美元，以保持在人工智能研究和产品领域的领先地位。